The Museum Wiesbaden will be displaying the Art Nouveau collection of Ferdinand Wolfgang Neess as a permanent exhibition in its southern wing. Its more than 570 objects provide a cross section of all Jugendstil genres, including prime examples of the quality and stylistic virtuosity boasted by late 19th-century art. With the first public presentation of the Neess collection on 29 June 2019, the Museum Wiesbaden will be showing this outstanding collection in its entirety to a broader audience for the very first time, while simultaneously putting Wiesbaden on the map of Jugendstil cities in Europe.

The collection contains more than 80 paintings, pastels and watercolours produced by artists throughout Europe. Works by Gustave Moreau and his student Edgar Maxence as well as those by Alphonse Osbert represent French Symbolism, while works by Fernand Khnopff and Jean Delville are prime examples of its Belgian variant. Numerous paintings by Franz von Stuck, Heinrich Vogeler, Ludwig von Hofmann and Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach document major German practices and perspectives in Symbolism and Jugendstil alike. The collection is complemented by works from Great Britain by renowned Pre-Raphaelites such as Evelyn De Morgan and John Melhuish Strudwick. Outstanding sculptural works include those by Alphonse Mucha and George Minne.

The collection also comprises a spectacular range of objects from the applied arts, such as furniture, glass and porcelain objects, and ceramics. It also features entire furniture ensembles by Emile Gallé, Hector Guimard and Louis Majorelle, as well as by Bernhard Pankok and Richard Riemerschmid. Its wealth of high-calibre glass objects also merits a mention, with numerous vases, bowls, lamps and chandeliers produced by Emile Gallé, Les Frères Muller, Les Frères Daum, Lötz Witwe and the Tiffany Studios enriching the collection, thereby underlining the importance of works in glass for Jugendstil, which can hardly be overestimated. No less worthy of mention are the porcelain objects and ceramics produced by figures such as Ernst Wahliss, Michael Powolny and Albin Müller.

The presentation at Museum Wiesbaden provides a representative overview, both in qualitative and quantitative terms, of the field of fin-de-siècle artistic production that occurred between Jugendstil and Symbolism.